Adding servers to a deployment (horizontal cluster members)

Applies to:

You can add servers to an IBM OpenPages® deployment. You can add non-admin application servers and standby reporting servers to increase the number of horizontal cluster members.

Before you begin

Review the following checklist before you add servers to your installation:

Ensure that the installation server is updated to the latest version. For more information, see the IBM OpenPages Installation and Deployment Guide. The latest version is available in the OpenPages fix pack kit.
Ensure that the installation server can communicate with all of the servers in your deployment, including the servers that you want to add.
Ensure that the servers you want to add can access the openpages-storage directory.
Prepare the servers that you want to add to your deployment. For more information, see the following topics in the IBM OpenPages Installation and Deployment Guide
- Checklist for Windows servers
- Checklist for Linux servers
  On the server that you are adding, configure the same file system usernames and passwords that you are using for the other servers in your deployment. Also, use the same file share permissions on all servers.
- Checklist for application servers
- Checklist for reporting servers
For application servers, ensure that the same version of IBM® Semeru Runtimes is installed on each server.

Procedure

Verify the status of the servers in your deployment. All servers must be running, except for the search server, which must be stopped.
See Starting and stopping servers.
Start the installation app and log in.
Open your deployment.
Do one of the following steps on the server that you want to add:
- Update the antivirus policy on the remote server to allow Node.js.
- Disable antivirus software on the remote server. You can re-enable it after you complete the installation of the new servers.
Add a new horizontal cluster member:
1. Click the server list and click the type of server that you want to add.
  - Click Application Server to add a non-admin application server horizontal cluster member.
  - Click Reporting Server to add a standby reporting server horizontal cluster member.
  A new server card is added to your deployment.
2. Enter the values for the server.
  
  If you are adding application servers, you must enter unique names in the OP Server Name field.
  
  If you are adding reporting servers, you must configure more Cognos dispatchers to ensure that the incoming requests are distributed across the reporting servers.
  
  For more information, see the IBM OpenPages Installation and Deployment Guide.
Click Validate to save and validate the deployment.

During the validation process, the installation app installs the agent software on the remote servers, starts the agents, validates the deployment properties, and verifies that the prerequisites for the installation are complete.

For example, the following image shows an application server card after validation is complete The Agent On icon is green, indicating that the agent is installed and running on the remote server.

Figure 1. Agent software is running on Application Server1

You can download a validation report.

Figure 2. Click to download a validation report

The validation reports are also stored in the <installation_server_home>/src/deployment/<deployment-name>/validation directory.

Fix any errors and review the warnings. Click Save, and then click Validate. When the Install button is available, you can continue. If fixing the issues requires an update to the environment variables on any servers, you must restart the installation server/agent on that server before re-validating.
Click Install.
The installation server stages the assets onto the new servers in your deployment.
Tip: You can log out and close the browser window. The Install process continues to run. When you log in to the installation app again, the app shows the status of your deployment. You can also close the browser window during the Configure process.
Click Configure.
The installation server sets up and configures the IBM OpenPages components.
Start the search server.
The installation server restarts the other servers in your deployment automatically.
Do the post installation tasks.
If you added a non-admin application server, do the following tasks:
- If the server is running on Windows, configure the OpenPages services to run under a domain account. See Configuring OpenPages applications to use a domain account (Windows).
- If the server is running on Linux, configure file share permissions. See Configuring file share permissions (Linux).
- Configure the load balancer. See Configuring IBM HTTP Server to balance the load on application servers.
- Verify that you have shared the openpages-storage directory so that the non-admin application server can access it. See Sharing a network OpenPages storage directory (Linux) or Sharing a network OpenPages storage directory (Windows).
If you added a standby reporting server, do the following tasks:
- Configure the load balancer. See Load balancing the reporting server.

Results

When the installation is complete, ensure that you can log in to OpenPages and complete tasks such as creating or updating objects, and running reports.